U2 or PJ. Whose legacy is ruined more by continuing...

[Birds in Hell]

Playing corporate events like Oracle Open World I think might do more tarnish to their legacy than releasing commercially mediocre albums.

I really doubt that.

It only created relatively muted controversy when it happened, I don't think it's going to take on any greater significance in hindsight.

[digster]

I don't know, if we're talking about hardcore fans, I think bad music will turn them off quicker. As for the general public, I doubt they know or care about shows such as that one, besides it being a quick headline that the band of integrity in the 90s is headlining corporate gigs.

[Buggy]

No entertainer is going to be remembered for their failures, unless the failure itself was his or her claim to fame.

Barry Bonds will probably be remembered as one of the greatest baseball players of all time, as well as a poster boy for someone who tarnished the game and his career by using steroids. In some cases I guess you can have a complicated legacy

[Buggy]

Playing corporate events like Oracle Open World I think might do more tarnish to their legacy than releasing commercially mediocre albums.

I really doubt that.

It only created relatively muted controversy when it happened, I don't think it's going to take on any greater significance in hindsight.

Perhaps...but...Pearl Jam, more than any other big band I can think of, has a strong association with anti-corporate sentiment and fighting for the little guy.
Can you imagine Bob Dylan playing a show celebrating the release of the latest version of Microsoft Windows?

PJ really held the Oracle show under the radar quite well, and also since they have not been in a constant media stream for a long time not many people cared about picking up on it. Imagine though if PJ had played a show like that in the middle their Vitalogy tour?
I guess timing has a lot to do with it. heh.

[Birds in Hell]

I don't think Pearl Jam are anti-corporate at all.

Ed has admittedly strayed into some pretty loose rhetoric over the years that might give that impression, but I think the fanbase projected a great deal of that militant anti-corporate stance onto the band.

[Buggy]

I think the fanbase projected a lot of that anti-corporate eco-warrier stance onto the band.

I think this is somewhat true. But...the Ticketmaster fight really cemented the perception, right at the peak of their popularity. I think back in the beginning PJ were pretty vocal against big corporate stuff. Then as time has gone on and they have tried doing everything on their own they have decided that I guess some corporate stuff is necessary if you actually want to make any kind of money on the scale that they do things. Hence, stuff like deals with Target to exclusively sell your album.

[stip]

I've ranted about this before, but while pearl jam is broadly concerned about the abuse and influence of corporate power, they were nevertheless still mired in that culture. There were one or two admirable and potentially consequential moves made against it in the early/mid 90s (that never went anywhere), and a lot of overheated rhetoric, but for a long time they've made their peace with the fact that you can be opposed to something structurally and still have to deal with it in your day to day life, so you might as well deal with it on terms that are as favorable to you as possible.

[digster]

I think the fanbase projected a lot of that anti-corporate eco-warrier stance onto the band.

I think this is somewhat true. But...the Ticketmaster fight really cemented the perception, right at the peak of their popularity. I think back in the beginning PJ were pretty vocal against big corporate stuff. Then as time has gone on and they have tried doing everything on their own they have decided that I guess some corporate stuff is necessary if you actually want to make any kind of money on the scale that they do things. Hence, stuff like deals with Target to exclusively sell your album.

I would agree that it goes against the image and some of the stances they projected (or at least the image they're primarily noted for), but I just don't think further down the line people are going to really care enough about that image or those stances to take much umbrage at the ways in which they changed.

[WtOB?]

[Thejambi]

Yeah he ran his mouth quite a bit that tour.

[Fuzzcharger]

I have never once considered PJ and U2 to be in remotely the same ballpark. If anything U2 became more and more commercial as their career went on and PJ less and less until they hit Backspacer and for me U2's music has always kinda sucked.

[VinylGuy]

There is nothing better than Ed badmouthing some other artist.

[Jorge]

Oh wow.

[Birds in Hell]

2003 Eddie makes me cringe.

(Good hair, though.)

[Kevin Davis]

Think what you will of U2's more recent stuff, but it's catapulted them into playing stadiums and that seems pretty farfetched for PJ at the moment.

Haven't U2 been playing stadiums since the '80's?

[Lament]

Think what you will of U2's more recent stuff, but it's catapulted them into playing stadiums and that seems pretty farfetched for PJ at the moment.

Haven't U2 been playing stadiums since the '80's?

Yeah. They've been a stadium act in Europe since The Unforgettable Fire, and in the US since The Joshua Tree. In 2001 and 2005 they opted to do arenas instead of stadiums in most of the world, but that was as much because of the make-up of their stage show as anything else. They've never lacked the ability to fill a football stadium in pretty much every major market.

[mray10]

U2 and Pearl Jam are two of the bands who I've followed down the absolute smallest of minute points at some time or other (and pretty consistently for over eighteen years). I don't really see a lot of similarities other than they're both popular rock bands. Their "legacies" and what's at stake moving forward with each of them, are actually very different.

People remember Michael Jordan as the greatest basketball player in history. They've already forgotten about the last years in Washington when idiot sportswriters were whining about protecting his legacy. And in a hundred years, no one will remember Michael Jordan at all.

This. So much. Every time the Stones go away for a few years it becomes ok again to be like "FROM 1968-1972 THEY WERE BETTER THAN ANY BAND EVER." Whenever they stop for good, the next generation of people who get into them isn't gonna care that they went on into the 2010's. They're gonna care about the handful of records they made that reside in the absolute elite echelon of modern popular music. Look at The Who, they made some really patchy, borderline questionable work post-Who By Numbers (which, while artistically appreciated now, was not at the time). But when some 16 year old discovers them for the first time (including myself back in the day), his (or her) initial reaction isn't "Man, Quadrophenia and The Who Sell Out and Who's Next seem way less awesome cause Face Dances sucks." Some 16 year old in 2025 who stumbles across Vitalogy or No Code and has his or her mind blown isn't gonna then be like "But wait, Backspacer sucks. Now I don't enjoy those other records. Damn."

I think this is pretty spot on, and ties back into the deterioration of the "monoculture," which many of us here grew up in and which is part of what made Pearl Jam huge, once upon a time. To some extent, that may become one of their legacies--being one of the last huge rock bands from the era of monoculture. Those days when a rock singer could be on the cover of Time magazine. When there was enough of a culture that there was something like Time magazine.

As for music, bad albums aren't going to tarnish what they did in the early 90s. I also don't think their legacy is confined to Ten. Betterman alone is enough to ensure that. But moreover, I don't think anyone is likely to remember them based on albums anyway. They'll remember the band that had Betterman, and Alive, and Even Flow, and Jeremy, and Black, and Daughter. Those are the songs I still hear on the radio and I expect them to persist.

[Oh, Jimmy]

Think what you will of U2's more recent stuff, but it's catapulted them into playing stadiums and that seems pretty farfetched for PJ at the moment.

Haven't U2 been playing stadiums since the '80's?

Yeah. They've been a stadium act in Europe since The Unforgettable Fire, and in the US since The Joshua Tree. In 2001 and 2005 they opted to do arenas instead of stadiums in most of the world, but that was as much because of the make-up of their stage show as anything else. They've never lacked the ability to fill a football stadium in pretty much every major market.

They didn't start playing stadiums consistently til the Popmart tour, and going by their setlist archive they didn't play many before that, in the States that is. Only one pops up on the Joshua Tree tour. Anyway, I don't really remember anyone calling them the biggest band in the world til ATYCLB, so the more recent stuff has done quite a bit to enhance their legacy.

[mray10]

Think what you will of U2's more recent stuff, but it's catapulted them into playing stadiums and that seems pretty farfetched for PJ at the moment.

Haven't U2 been playing stadiums since the '80's?

Yeah. They've been a stadium act in Europe since The Unforgettable Fire, and in the US since The Joshua Tree. In 2001 and 2005 they opted to do arenas instead of stadiums in most of the world, but that was as much because of the make-up of their stage show as anything else. They've never lacked the ability to fill a football stadium in pretty much every major market.

They didn't start playing stadiums consistently til the Popmart tour, and going by their setlist archive they didn't play many before that, in the States that is. Only one pops up on the Joshua Tree tour. Anyway, I don't really remember anyone calling them the biggest band in the world til ATYCLB, so the more recent stuff has done quite a bit to enhance their legacy.

If this is true, then it's the fault of your own experience. They were absolutely bigger in 1987 than they were in 2001.

And while they played a mix of stadiums in the states from Joshua Tree era on, they've always been big enough for stadiums. Note in areas where they did arena shows, they were typically doing multiple nights.

[warehouse]

Think what you will of U2's more recent stuff, but it's catapulted them into playing stadiums and that seems pretty farfetched for PJ at the moment.

Haven't U2 been playing stadiums since the '80's?

Yeah. They've been a stadium act in Europe since The Unforgettable Fire, and in the US since The Joshua Tree. In 2001 and 2005 they opted to do arenas instead of stadiums in most of the world, but that was as much because of the make-up of their stage show as anything else. They've never lacked the ability to fill a football stadium in pretty much every major market.

They didn't start playing stadiums consistently til the Popmart tour, and going by their setlist archive they didn't play many before that, in the States that is. Only one pops up on the Joshua Tree tour. Anyway, I don't really remember anyone calling them the biggest band in the world til ATYCLB, so the more recent stuff has done quite a bit to enhance their legacy.

If this is true, then it's the fault of your own experience. They were absolutely bigger in 1987 than they were in 2001.

And while they played a mix of stadiums in the states from Joshua Tree era on, they've always been big enough for stadiums. Note in areas where they did arena shows, they were typically doing multiple nights.

r u drunk? they might have been better, but they were not bigger